Mary Davis request for son's discharge, Portland, 1864

Description

Mary O. Davis of Portland wrote to Brig. Gen. George F. Shepley, commander of the Division of Eastern Virginia for the Union army, seeking his intervention to have her son, Pvt. Horace O. Davis of "Baker's Cavalry" (the 1st Maine Cavalry) discharged.

She wrote to Shepley, a native of Maine and resident of Portland before the war, that her son had been promised he could serve as a musician, but after an illness, that position was no longer open. She wrote that he was unfit to be a soldier.

She had been in Norfolk and met with Shepley when she went to get her son and take him back to Maine on a furlough and hoped he could be discharged without returning to Virginia.